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The following is an article Vicki wrote for the American Cowboy Magazine.
FROM
AUDEN TO ADRENALIN
Ken Rose has an ear for poetry- - but just his left one. The doctor of English literature lost his right ear to a Brahma bull back when he parachuted into rodeos and then blew up his pants. Behind the lectern, Rose brings students and T. S. Elliot together after a career keeping cowboys and bulls apart. "I relate in 'Okie' form," says Rose. "People think literature is ethereal and intellectual. But I explain it from everyday life experiences." Granted Rose's life as bull rider, clown, Green Beret, poet, drummer, and college professor is hardly ordinary. Still, everything connects. "Rodeoing is an existential thing," he says. "You're on your own. Ultimately that's the human condition. Whether you succeed or fail depends on your mental attitude."
Butch began rodeoing just outside Lawton, Oklahoma, when rodeos were the surround-sound entertainment of the 50s, and cowboys were its stars. "Clowns weren't specialized then," says Rose. "I'd be the first bull rider. Then I'd pull off my boots and chaps, put on baggy pants and baseball shoes, and finish the rodeo fighting bulls." He rode a little white mule and demonstrated the similarities of its rear-end exhaust to the Oldsmobile's. His sky-dive entrance developed after four years in Vietnam. Full of his experiences in the Special Forces, Rose headed toward the university. "I wanted to write a novel about war," he says. "But I had no idea how. I figured I needed to go to college and major in English. but I discovered I enjoyed literary criticism and poetry - - and wasn't really too bad at either."
Still, between reserve duty, playing drums in a band, and course work, the roar of the crowd beckoned. At 35, Rose decided clowning in down-turned mouth and grease-paint beard was safer than a bull's back. "The Flying Clown," dropped into the PRCA rodeos in Burwell, Nebraska, Duluth, Tallahassee, Weise, Idaho, and Coffeeville, Kansas. Rose hit the dirt with a hat cleaning and trick shooting act. During the Bicentennial, his partner aimed a cannon on a red-coated Rose who ignited black powder in his pants for a shot heard at least as high as the bleacher seats.
But a clown's job is to protect the bull rider. "Clowning is like Vietnam," he says. "You had to accomplish a mission and protect your friends." In 1983 a bull kicked off Rose's ear in a blow so forceful, he left skin skid marks in the dirt. Doctors reattached the ear, but Rose's full time rodeo career soon ended. "I entered three or four more rodeos," says Rose. "I just couldn't quit after that happened."
His part-time doctorate studies escalated to Elliot and Faulkner when he found teenagers more formidable than crossbreds. "I wanted to teach English, coach baseball, and rodeo. But a junior high English class in Caney, Oklahoma, inspired me to work on my graduate degree." Dr. Rose taught twenty-five years at Oklahoma State. He moved to Branson's entertainment mecca three years ago. As adjunct professor in English Composition and American Literature for the College of the Ozarks and Columbia College, he stresses split infinitives, instead of split lips, broken thoughts, not broken bones. "He taught me to make complete sentences out of fragments and how to make an interesting sentence without being a mile long," says Nancy Wallace, a psychology major. "His boots tell you right away he's 'country'," says Julie McGrath, "But his words and how he speaks tell he really knows his material."
Publishing two poetry books, Rose still longs to use his military and rodeo skills. "I volunteered three times during Desert Storm," he said, "But they said they didn't need any more middle-aged majors." At clown reunions, he paints his face and works the crowd. Fighting bulls is tempting. "I've lived a lot of different lives," says Dr. Ken "Butch" Rose. "I've been a pretty good cowboy for a musician, a pretty good English teacher for a cowboy, and a pretty good musician for a soldier. I don't think that I would change much of anything."